NBA cancels games through the end of November

NBA commissioner David Stern cancelled all games through Nov. 30 on Friday after labour negotiations broke down for the second time in a week.

The Associated PressNBA commissioner David Stern was somber after today's meetings, saying labor head Billy Hunter had walked out of the room.

"It's not practical, possible or prudent to have a full season now," Stern said.

After two days of making some progress on salary cap issues, the two sides brought the revenue split back into the discussion and got stuck on both.

Owners are insistent on a 50-50 split of revenues, while players last formally proposed they get 52.5 percent, leaving them about $100 million apart annually. Players were guaranteed 57 percent in the previous collective bargaining agreement.

"We made a lot of concessions, but unfortunately at this time it's not enough, and we're not prepared or unable at this time to move any further," union executive director Billy Hunter said.

Stern said the NBA owners were "willing" to go to 50 percent. But he said Hunter was unwilling to "go a penny below 52," that he had been getting many calls from agents and then closed up his book and walked out of the room.

Hunter said the league initially moved its target down to 47 percent during Friday's six-hour session then returned to its previous proposal of 50 percent of revenues.

"Derek (Fisher) and I made it clear that we could not take the 50-50 deal to our membership. Not with all the concessions that we granted," Hunter said. "We said we got to have some dollars."

But with more games cancelled, the losses will begin to mount.

"We're going to have to recalculate how bad the damage is," Stern said. "The next offer will reflect the extraordinary losses that are piling up now."

Just a day earlier, Stern had said he would consider it a failure if the two sides didn't reach a deal in the next few days and vowed they would take "one heck of a shot" to get a deal.

No further talks have been scheduled.

Union president Fisher said it was difficult to say why talks broke down, or when they would start up again.

"We're here, we've always been here, but today just wasn't the day to try and finish this out," he said.

Fisher said there were still too many system restrictions in the owners' proposal. Players want to keep a system similar to the old one, and fear owners' ideas would limit player movement.

And though they might be inclined to give up one if they received more concessions on the other, players make it sound as if they are the ones doing all the giving back.

The old cap system allowed teams to exceed it through the use of a number of exceptions, many of which the league wants to tweak or even eliminate. Hunter has called a hard cap a "blood issue" to players, and though the league has backed off its initial proposal calling for one, players think the changes owners want would work like one.

"We've told them that we don't want a hard cap. We don't want a hard cap any kind of way, either an obvious hard cap or a hard cap that may not be as obvious to most people but we know it works like a hard cap," Hunter said. "And so you get there, and then all of a sudden they say, 'Well, we also have to have our number.' And you say, 'Well wait a minute, you're not negotiating in good faith.'"

When players offered to reduce their guarantee from 57 per cent to 53 per cent, Hunter said that would have transferred about $1.1 billion to owners over six years. Now, at 52.5, he said that would grow to more than $1.5 billion.

But even a 50-50 split would be too high for some hardline owners, because it would reduce only $280 million of the $300 million they said they lost last season. Owners initially proposed a split that players said would have had them around 40 per cent.

Though they will miss a paycheque on Nov. 15, Hunter said each player would have received a minimum of $100,000 from the escrow money that was returned to them to make up the difference after salaries fell short of the guaranteed 57 per cent of revenues last season.

The small groups that were meeting grew a bit Friday. Union vice-presidents Chris Paul — wearing a Yankees cap for his trip to New York — and Theo Ratliff joined the talks, and economist Kevin Murphy returned after he was unavailable Thursday. Mavericks owner Mark Cuban stayed for the session after taking part Thursday.